News and Analysis
After E-Commerce Gains, Retailers Struggle with Return Logistics
$70.5 billion worth of holiday purchases this year are expected to be returned, and 400 million square feet of additional warehouse space could be needed just to process those returns. For retailers already facing a deluge of products coming back into their warehouses, it could already be too late.
SMBs Seek Speedy Relief to Recover in 2021
The Biden administration is pledging $15 billion in grants to help businesses, and $35 billion for small business financing programs, as part of its new American Rescue Plan. But many grants and recovery programs have long timelines, and business owners are saying they need more immediate support.
Commentary
LION Loses Director DeRienzo to Hearst, but ‘Indie’ Summit Doesn’t Miss a Beat
To find out what the Summit of Local Independent Online News Publishers accomplished, I went to longtime journalist Steve Beatty, who was editor and CEO of the award-winning, investigative website The Lens in New Orleans for eight years before joining LION as a consultant last January and who, with DeRienzo’s departure, has been named interim director.
Google and the On-SERP Experience: We’re Just Gettin’ Warmed Up
The introduction of a new Knowledge Graph layer in the form of “Topics” indicates to me that Google’s latest efforts in this arena will extend in two directions beyond Local entities. I see these linkages extending all the way up the search journey to initial consideration and even further down the funnel beyond Local entities.
Latest Posts
Street Fight Daily: Uber CEO Resigns, Instagram Stories’ Rapid Growth Continues
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Resigns as CEO… Instagram Stories Is Still Growing Quickly And Now Has 250 Million Users… DMA Report Finds Programmatic and Mobile Payments Leading Tech Adopted by Marketers…
Insticator Uses Trivia to Make a Serious Case for Ad Revenue
Insticator says its quizzes and polls generate 15 billion ad impressions each month, increase average website revenue by 160% a month and heighten average user engagement by 44%. We reached out to Kiersten Toye, who is in charge of the marketing team that works with client publishers at the company.
Street Fight Daily: Blue Apron Prices IPO, How Retailers Can Respond to Amazon’s Disruption
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Blue Apron and Delivery Hero Price IPOs Following Amazon’s Big Buy… How Retailers Will Have to Adapt to Avoid Getting Eaten by Amazon… The Race Is On to Challenge Google-Facebook Duopoly in Digital Advertising…
Report: Delivery Apps Don’t Cannibalize Restaurant Visits
Sense360’s analysis found no evidence that delivery apps lead to significant drops in restaurant visits. The analysis also found that consumers who download delivery apps tend to have higher incomes, and visit fine dining restaurants 2.5x more frequently, than those who haven’t downloaded these apps.
Making Sense of Posts in Google’s SMB Product Portfolio
“In local, most businesses do not have a transaction so Google wants to control the action,” Mike Blumenthal tells David Mihm. “If they can sell an ad, great, and if not then they take credit for a click or a call, driving directions or response to a CTA (and gather the data of those activities).”
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Why TV Remains the Heartbeat of Local Connection